The 10 best online travel agencies in 2024

Global travel spend in 2024 is expected to hit $2 trillion

. That’s right, trillion. Plus, that’s down 16% from the year before.

There’s plenty of money to be made in the travel industry—meaning travelers have a wide variety of travel tools and solutions to make their trips simpler and easier.

We’ve compiled the top ten best online travel agencies to help you make the most of your next trip. Whether you’re traveling for leisure or for business, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s get this show on the road.

Note: We’ve included our top picks for OTAs that specialize in flights at the bottom of this section—if you’d prefer to jump ahead.

Booking.com is the world’s largest accommodation booking website, and it also offers customers the chance to book their travel and car rental, too. It enables travelers to explore different accommodation types, destinations, and deals. It’s a comprehensive OTA for the everyday traveler.

Overall, booking.com is a comprehensive online travel agency with hotels and flights anywhere in the world. That being said, you’ll need to concentrate—it often gets criticized for its overwhelming UI.

Agoda doesn’t offer much in terms of flight booking, but it's a great platform for finding accommodations—especially private homes and apartments.

The flight booking tool isn’t as comprehensive as some others, however, so you may want to look for a tool with wider coverage.

Lastminute.com specializes in finding flight-and-hotel packages and all-inclusive vacation packages at great prices for last-minute travelers. If you’re brave enough to play chicken, lastminute.com is where you’ll find the golden egg of travel experiences.

This is a great OTA for travelers who prefer to leave things to the last minute in pursuit of the best deal. You’re sure to find it here, plus a wide selection of other flight and hotel deals.

Expedia has been providing travelers with access to flights, hotels, and cars since the nineties–and they’re still a strong contender today. In fact, they’re the biggest travel agency in the world. Hotels.com, trivago, Travelocity—they’re all owned by Expedia, so you know you’re unlikely to find a better deal elsewhere.

Expedia is a particularly good option for those wanting to pay for flights, accommodation, and car rental in one go.

Hotwire is another long-standing online travel agency—it’s been around since 2000. It’s known for its ‘secret deals’, in which travelers get a great deal on a trip they know very little about. It requires some flexibility, but it’s a great way for adventurous types to travel on a small budget.

If you’re booking last minute, consider doing it with Hotwire.

This means the customers can request the operators for changes and work on an itinerary that best matches the needs of the travelers. Furthermore, their customer care team acts as a bridge between prospective travelers and tour operators.

Once you make your decision, you’ll be taken from the Skyscanner website to the third party’s booking form to complete the booking process and secure the airfare.

Skyscanner is trusted by millions of people to find the best deals with the most flexibility. It essentially gathers all the offers from every OTA to present customers with the best deals available.

It offers consistently low prices and travel insurance for multi-city travel.

Kiwi.com is an innovative OTA—perfect for city-hoppers and the travel-hungry. Be wary, though—some reviews claim that cancellation is tricky and customer service can be unreliable.

This platform is more than just an OTA, it’s a comprehensive corporate travel management tool that helps your team book, manage, and report on business travel. TravelPerk ensures employees are traveling stress-free at no sacrifice to experience.

TravelPerk gives employees access to the information and the security they need to travel with peace of mind. It gives organizations and travel managers access to the competitive corporate travel rates.

SAP Concur has been around for years—since 1993—and is trusted by many businesses to provide comprehensive business travel solutions. Its technology is self-owned and managed, meaning there’s no back and forth with third parties for changes or updates.

SAP Concur is a great tool for organizations looking for a traditional approach to business travel. However, it requires patience–the platform takes

6-8 weeks

to implement and user onboarding in order to make the most of it. Plus, some users report that the

UI is outdated

, making it a less enjoyable experience for business travelers.

CWT’s been in the travel industry for over 150 years, but MyCWT is an experienced travel management solution for business travelers everywhere.

MyCWT is a great solution for companies with a bigger budget and big corporate travel needs. They do, however, use third-party software to deliver deals to business travelers and organizations—meaning updates and changes to the software can take time. There’s lots of back and forth that slows down progress and platform development.

Online travel agencies can be used by the general public for leisure travel, and by organizations for business travel. The platforms differ in what they offer, but the premise remains the same: to facilitate travel and its associated admin and costs.

Hotels, airlines, and car hire companies pay online travel agencies to appear on their website. On the other hand, the advantage for the service provider is the added visibility that OTAs can provide.

OTAs work by providing a streamlined approach to all things travel. It involves the customer accessing a website or platform on which they’re offered a wide variety of travel options from a number of different travel and accommodation providers.

If the airlines and hotels are the sheep, OTAs are the shepherd—they gather and present all the necessary details for consumers to make a travel decision.

Thes benefits are why OTAs are so popular with travelers worldwide, and why you want to consider finding the one that works best for you. Here’re the details you need to have in mind before considering the

corporate travel services

of an online travel agency:

Take note: not all OTA’s have their own cancellation and changes policy—some, like Skyscanner, take you to the vendors website to confirm your ticket. This then means your subject to the vendor’s cancellation and changes policy, which may not be all that flexible.

Again, some platforms—mainly aggregator sites—will send you to a third-party website for booking. This means you’ll need to liaise directly with the third-party for any changes.

You’re offered the best deals for your area in a currency you know—making sure everything’s crystal clear when it comes to booking.

Whether you’re traveling for business or leisure; from Hawaii or Peru or wherever business or your fancy takes you—we hope these tools help you find the best deal available. The convenience of OTAs is unmatched, it’s up to you to make the most of your travel options.